Everyone has heard of the boy who lives in these trees
Yet his unidentifiable shape remains unseen, but felt in the passing breeze
Or his childish cries, held deep inside a dead husk
He waits, from dawn to dusk
His obsidian eyes staring out from pitch black
Waiting…
“…for someone who may stare back,” Terence said, as he stared into the black hole. “They say its name was Isaac, back before his parents abandoned him here.”
“Isaac?” I chuckled. “That doesn’t sound scary.”
“Well, when he was first born he was just Isaac. Not what he would eventually turn into out here.”
This comment got me looking around at the surreal early morning environment of the redwoods. Our wedding anniversary being in November – 20 years - meant our trip was usually marred by heavy rain and muddy hikes. What would normally be an expansive view of towering, majestic redwoods and greenery was instead wrapped in an ethereal morning mist, leaving my imagination to run wild with every sound that fell outside the normal rhythm of the forest. It wasn’t always good for my nerves, but I still found a certain comfort in it all as it brought back a rush of nostalgia for our earlier days as young, dumb 20-somethings, especially since all the good memories seemed to come during the colder part of the year.
We stood in between the opening of the trunk of a fallen redwood, Terence staring directly into its black maw with wild bark splayed out around the opening like the jagged teeth of a monster, waiting for one to enter and be fed on. A section of the trunk had been neatly cut open to allow people to pass through on the trail. The length of it stretched on for what looked to be nearly 30 feet. The smooth, ashen surface of the trunk had been riddled with artwork carved in over the years with all the generic doomsday symbols – skulls with wild expressions, over-exaggerated bats, sharp teeth, and the old-fashioned Disney warning “enter if you dare!”
Our Australian Shepherd, Layla, not one to shy or cower away from anything or anyone, backed away with a whimper. Her first time out in the forest, so there was a first for everything, I suppose.
“He was deformed at birth,” Terence explained further about the mystery boy. “His parents abandoned him out here in the woods over ten years ago, thinking he’d either starve to death or get mauled by an animal. Except he managed to find a way to become an apex predator himself.”
“Predator or prey, huh?” I added.
“You got it. But that’s not the worst part. To make sure he’s the only predator in the forest, he removes the teeth and claws from any animal he encounters.”
“What makes you think this is a story I want to hear?” I asked.
Terence turned back to me with that mischievous grin, taking great pleasure in making me squirm. That grin was powerful back in its day, always able to disarm anyone of the female gender, but at 50, even as he approached his silver fox years, it was finally crossing the line into creepy.“You think he’s at home? Or maybe off to find fresh prey?” he asked.
“Why don’t you wait inside for him,” I shot back.
“Oh, don’t worry about me. If anything, he’d go for Layla first. He’s more scared of animals than humans.”
“Maybe we should have dressed you up in a bear suit, then.”
Terence turned back to the interior of the tree, appearing more curious than I could believe. He was not one to buy into myths or old wives’ tales so easily, or at least, so I thought. His curiosity seemed to be getting the better of him.
“What do you honestly think you’ll find in there?” I asked. “Inspiration for your next play?”
“No,” Terence responded. “But I always liked the idea of putting an urban legend to the test. I never believed in them, but there’s always that small voice in the back of my head that’s waiting for the surprise.”
“You have your fun, then. I’ll wait out here.”
I generally can’t stand people who refuse to walk under ladders or claim to feel a presence in an old room. I had my own small voice, which never spoke up in any situation, and it had to restrain itself the best it could not to scream out words like phony or moron when dealing with psychics, fortune tellers, or just the average person who believed they could feel an energy coming off someone.
Looking at Terence moving his head around as he gazed inside, that little voice also wanted to scream out for him to cut off his pretentious ponytail. No matter how hard he tried to dress the part of a New York playwright, his role was still that of a college professor, and that little voice sometimes wanted to scream that fact right in his face during our darker moments. He was fortunate enough to never experience that side of me. It sometimes came out in snarky comments or me abruptly changing a subject I didn’t have the strength to deal with, but it never went any further. On my good days, and they were mostly good days, I admired his creative ambitions and respected him for choosing the practical career of professor.
Terence shone a flashlight inside the tree, revealing nothing more than a hollowed out shell. It might have been his natural storytelling ability that got my imagination so fired up, but each time he shone the beam into some other part of the darkness I half-expected to see a pair of yellow eyes staring back at us. Perhaps that little voice inside my head worked the same way as his. But there was nothing.
Except there was no end to the darkness, in spite of the fact that he was using an LED flashlight, which should have been strong enough to reach the end of the tree.Layla growled.
“Well isn’t that fascinating, it’s a tree,” I declared, layering on the sarcasm to get him to move on.
He looked back at me again with that same grin, an idea brewing, before he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tennis ball.
Layla’s ears perked up, her tail wagging furiously at the sight of the ball.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned him.
“What? It’s just a myth, right?” Terence asked.
“We don’t know what’s in there. She could step on something sharp, or there could be a real animal in there like a raccoon with rabies or something –“
He threw the ball and Layla, as predictable as ever and forgetting her distrust of whatever was inside the dark space, charged inside after it. And that little voice wanted to scream. He always believed that his playful humor was the cure for any strong emotion I had, and that my fear was nothing more than me being pouty instead of it really being about my stomach turning in on itself.
Layla returned, ball in her mouth, dropping it off at Terence’s feet.
“See?” Terence said in that overconfident tone, “not a scratch on her.”
Then, just when I thought it was over, he threw the ball back inside, sending Layla scurrying after it again.
“Can you just give it a rest?!” I shouted.
“All right, all right, I’m sorry.”
Layla came back out again, except she didn’t have the ball in her mouth. She dropped something new at Terence’s feet. His amused expression was replaced by a puzzled curiosity. He leaned down to examine something.
“Look,” Terence said, holding something between his thumb and forefinger.I stepped in to get a closer look to see a curved, white object with a pointed end. A tooth. We both looked at each other, dumfounded, before I finally shook my head, stepping back.
“Let’s get moving,” I said. “This is getting weird.”
“Sarah, it’s just a tooth,” Terence said. “Let me go get her ball and we’ll go.”
“We don’t need it, we’ve got plenty. Don’t be stupid. Terence!”
But he quickly became swallowed up by the blackness. Layla, unfortunately, went following in after him, and now all I could do was wait.
It was about another 15 minutes, neither of them in sight, when I began to panic.***“Terence!” I screamed for what felt like the hundredth time. It would seem that the normal thing to do in a situation like this would be to rush inside and see what happened, except my gut instinct wouldn’t allow me to move an inch, believing I would disappear on the spot into some horrifying alternate dimension.
The beam of my LED flashlight had circled the entire perimeter of the tree trunk countless times, but it was as if they never existed.
The fucking idiot! That little chaotic voice inside me cursed, or Miss Chaos as I called her. All the things I would never say to his face and never really bought into believing. Absolutely talentless shithead with the pretentious ponytail.
Miss Chaos was now screaming at me to simply walk away and enjoy the thrill of getting a hard reset on life. But the practical voice, which was much louder and less interested in the idea of chaos, reminded me of our 20th anniversary and what would hopefully be another 20 years of marital bliss. Miss Practical always had a way of watering down any resentment I held towards Terence through simple flashes of surprise gifts and sentimental moments in bed, even though those moments shrank more and more over the years, their sell-by date quickly approaching. Miss Chaos painted a very enticing picture, but Miss Practical was calculating and smart, banking on my fear of instability. And as always, she won out.
Leaving behind the outside world, I stepped inside the jagged mouth of this urban myth. I only seemed to take a few steps before I felt like I was swallowed whole, the interior becoming more claustrophobic almost immediately.
My mind kept coming back to a mutilated raccoon we had passed by earlier. It’s not as if it were uncommon to find such things out in the forest, but there was something unnatural, hateful in the way it had been torn apart. Torn apart or devoured. Although I had looked away quickly, what caught my attention was the blood ringed around the animal’s mouth. Then again, a lot of people traverse these woods, so it was entirely possible some dumb kids, too curious for their own good, got a hold of the poor creature and had their way with it.
As I made my way deeper inside, I was tempted to turn off the light out of fear that something horrifying would appear in front of it, ready to attack. The Ignorance is Bliss mentality suited me much better in the dark. But the last thing I wanted was to trip over my husband or Layla, which would most definitely set my body ablaze with adrenaline and I had had enough of that at the moment. So the light stayed on.
It was quiet. Even though I had left behind the open forest and all its sounds, the quiet in here felt unnatural, as if I had entered into the vacuum of space. I placed my hand on the inner wall of the trunk, using the little grooves and bumps to help keep me balanced. My feet carefully navigated the stretches of gnarled wood, taking each step carefully to avoid tripping over the ridges and bowed parts of the ground.
Every so often I would turn back to see how much distance there was between me and the opening, if only to keep myself from going too far past the point of no return. Miss Chaos, always enjoying a good scare, kept flashing images at me of the opening to the trunk being closed off. Not funny at all, Chaos.You never really know what pitch black is until you’re in it, and I had to remind myself every few seconds to pace my breathing to keep from sinking into a panic attack. Even this far in, the flashlight couldn’t reveal the end of this cavern.
“Layla, girl,” I called out.
To my surprise, as I continued to travel along, I could feel the splintery, rippled texture of the wood turn smooth under my hand. Even the little stumps that my feet encountered began to disappear as I got further inside. The smoothness was as slick as glass, almost man-made.
“Terence!” I screamed, my voice trailing off into nowhere. “If you can hear me then say something.”When I turned back to get a sense of how deep inside I was, I put my hand up in front of me to see that I could completely obscure the view of the opening, thereby making it official that only a little bit further and I would be past the point of no return.
It was in the middle of this thought when I felt something wet crawl over my hand propped against the wall, sending my body into a frenzy of twists and turns as I let out what must have been one of my most powerful screams, followed by me dropping the flashlight onto the ground. My stomach dropped as I heard it crack.
The creepy crawler in question was nothing more than a banana slug.
I quickly turned my focus to the flashlight that was now partially functioning, its beam weakly flickering. It was then that my eyes traveled the length of the beam to see Layla, on her side, her body rising up and down in frantic breaths, whimpering.
Dropping down to her side, I fixed the light on her to see her muzzle stained with blood and a few of her teeth missing. Her eyes were motionless, shocked.
“Oh. Baby, you poor thing,” I whispered, already fighting back tears. “Who did this – “
I made the mistake of touching her, and still being in shock, she sprang up and sank her teeth into my arm. She never had an aggressive moment with me before, leaving me stumbling around in the dark like a fool with no clue as to how to handle her. This was an uninhibited bite, intended to never let go to ensure her survival from whatever hurt her, and I felt that need for survival through the unbearable pressure on my arm and the streaks of searing pain. It wasn’t until I fell onto my back that she turned in the opposite direction and tore off.
That child-like sob that only comes out in unbearable moments of terror, heartache, and pain as adults was finally released as I wailed at the top of my lungs, the tears flowing and my throat completely choked up.
In that moment, wherever Terence was, I truly hoped more than anything that he was suffering, whether it be a broken bone or a bite of his own or just pure panic at being lost. The voice of Miss Practical, for the first time ever, was powerless as images of hurting him myself in the worst way possible flooded my imagination. It built up in me until I gritted my teeth and a 20-year scream echoed off the walls of the wooden chamber.
“I hate yooouuu!”
Miss Chaos was smiling.
Once the quiet returned I took a deep breath. It was enough. I had the strength to survive anything now, maybe even another 20 years.
Something then sniffed the air nearby. I whipped my head in the direction of the noise, which was thankfully coming from deeper within and not in the way of the entrance. I pulled myself onto my feet, bringing the flashlight up with me, aiming its weak beam up ahead. But with amazing timing, the damn thing went dead and I was buried in darkness. I reached my hand out to the wall, taking slow steps backwards, refusing to turn back around from whatever “myth” was sniffing around.
There was a scratching. I knew right away that this was not the tiny scratches of the claws on a small animal, but something much more dangerous. The nails dragging across the wood started out light, but grew louder as they pressed harder into the surface of the trunk and ended with a swipe at the end, like someone sharpening a knife.
A warning.
I continued to back away. But the sniffing seemed to be following me on the way out. When my foot caught on something and I let out a sharp whimper, it was met with a growl.
And then came a voice like that of a dying demon’s last words.
“Teerr-ins… Lay-ya.”
Once I felt the sun on my back, I made a run for it.***“This is my fourth time talking to you guys because no one has shown up yet!” I screamed into the phone at the operator for the Sheriff’s office.
“I’m so sorry to hear that, ma’am,” the operator responded, “but we’ve had a lot of calls today and we’re short-staffed. Another deputy should be out there in another hour, two at the most.”
This lady was so rational and reasonable it was infuriating. I almost wished she would yell back at me to justify screaming into her ear, some way to let out the panic of everything that happened. The “ma’am” definitely didn’t make me feel any better. Her voice sounded somewhere in its twenties.The deputy who showed up earlier at the tree had stared at me as if I were a mental patient as I recounted what happened. He had wandered inside, calling out to Terence for no more than a few minutes and then came out looking as if he were ready to accuse me of phoning in a prank. He left after only about 20 minutes, encouraging me to go back home where my husband would most likely be waiting.
“Listen, this is not a case of someone getting lost,” I warned her, carefully running through a speech I composed just before the call to help give them a sense of urgency. “My husband did not go missing inside a tree. Someone in there was waiting to attack. My dog was injured, she had teeth missing. This is clearly a physical assault and my husband’s life is still in danger, he could be hours or minutes away from death. Now please don’t tell me that every single one of your deputies is wrapped up in cases more urgent than this, because that can’t be true.”
“Okay, ma’am, can you hold on a second?”
I felt my whole body slump down in the chair, my carefully constructed speech obviously having no effect. “Yes,” I groaned.
There was a click and I was put on hold. There was no music, only a series of patterned beeps, which made me think of a ticking clock on a bomb seconds away from a messy explosion. I would have preferred silence.
I sat next to the curtained window in the living room that led to the door of the cabin, hoping to see Terence’s shadow pass. I left the window cracked to let in some air, the tension of the day making me feel like I was trapped in a sauna. Earlier in the day, before the sun went down, the slightest noise, whether it be wood creaking or a gust of wind, always diverted my attention back to the window. I didn’t bother much anymore.
The wind would occasionally cause the curtains to flutter over my shoulders. They were ragged, decades old probably, and the yellow coloring didn’t do it any favors in my eyes, but I kept my eyes forward. I’m not sure why. Perhaps the sudden appearance of someone in the window, whether it be Terence or someone else, would cause me to faint.
The stench of uncooked salmon had wafted into the living room, and even though I hadn’t had anything to eat since morning, odds are it would probably end up in the trash.
Another click and she was back on. “Hello, ma’am?”
“Yes, I’m here,” I said.
“So, I’m going to reach out to one of the deputies who should be finishing up their call shortly and make sure that you are their next stop. It shouldn’t be more than an hour, maybe two at the most.”
And with that I knew it was hopeless. They were clearly buying time, finding ways to placate me, hoping that by the time two hours had passed that either my husband or dog would be back home, or I would just give up. This urban myth possibly had a stronger hold on this area than I gave it credit for.
“Thank you,” I said and promptly hung up. Nothing else to say at this point, and I didn’t want to hear another one of her apologies.
I looked over to the window again, waiting for his shadow to appear while listening carefully to the nighttime sounds, hoping a voice or a cough would break through the rhythmic chirping of crickets.
Nothing.
After spending the afternoon circling the perimeter of the cabin and allowing myself to become lost down a few trails, I found myself unwilling to believe what was happening. No one ever does when these traumatic incidents happen to them. I called out for Layla so many times I was half expecting the wind to repeat her name back to me. But the sun going down meant I could easily get lost myself, so the last resort was leaving behind treats leading to a bowl of dog food at the front door. Maybe, if she was lucky, some other family had found her and she was hopefully in good hands. A family, with children who would worship and care for her.
Yes, she might be okay because she got out. But Terence. I had revisited the tree a couple times during the day, hoping to find him nearby, possibly with a broken leg or even half-dead. And although he was most likely somewhere in the dead tree, I simply couldn’t go back inside. The first thought that came to me when I was standing outside of it again was, “Would he come in after me?” I suppose every couple might ask themselves this question when a life or death scenario pops up in their head, but it’s a question of dedication you hope is never put to the test. He was an artist, and, quite frankly, most artists were cowards. They enjoyed the notoriety and admiration of recreating the illusion of life with their works, but put them on a sinking ship and they’ll leave with the rats.
No. That’s a horrible way to think. You wouldn’t be in this much of a panic, I thought, if you didn’t truly love him. And it was true, I did love him, and I’m going through the shock of losing both my dog and husband to an unseen force within minutes of each other. All those wonderful memories flooded my mind, back to the days where it was lighter and even his foibles amused me. And let’s face it – I’m no picnic either. He’s had to put up with me for 20 years as well.
It’ll have to be morning when I go back. His backpack had food and water in it, so it’s very possible he’d be able to sustain himself overnight. This time, though, I would be prepared.
In a locked kitchen drawer was a handgun Terence had brought along for the trip. Even though he had lived in some of the worst neighborhoods in New York, he was somehow convinced that he would most likely encounter someone far more dangerous out here in the wilderness. Then again, he might have been right. I packed the gun along with my pepper spray and a new flashlight in my backpack. It may have been overkill, but I wasn’t going back into the dark again tomorrow without some sort of defense.
It was then that I heard the groan of wood bending under the weight of someone. A slow moving shadow passed the curtains, except the silhouette was hunched down low, its movements more animal-like than human, lurching its way to the door. An unexpected visitor.
The smart move would have been to hide. But I stayed perfectly still and held my breath.
I could hear my visitor sniffing around just outside. The dog food was rustled around a bit. There was a chewing sound followed by a cough.
The shadow then passed by the window again. A perfectly timed gust of wind peeled back the curtain to reveal an arched back covered in either hair or silt.
Keeping my eye on the window, in case it came back, I cracked open the door to hear it leave. The footsteps were faint, soft, treading lightly over the dirt until they disappeared into the forest.
I opened the door to find chewed up dog food spit out onto the ground. There was something mixed in with the dog food in the bowl. I knew what it was before I even leaned down to analyze it – a tooth. After sifting around in the bowl I came up with an entire mouthful of teeth, the reality of it hitting me when I found a molar with a filling and a chipped incisor. The same one Terence had all his adult life.